Waking up in the morning after
a night's sleep, I looked around the spacious high-ceilinged
room and sought my bearings. Most prominent were the two beds –
the one on which I was lying, and a smaller one perpendicular to mine, situated at the end of the room toward the
foot of my bed. Seeing a tall man lying in the
other bed, I suddenly remembered who he was: vice-president Al
Gore.

I quietly rose from my bed,
careful not to make any noise to awaken Gore. After a few minutes, however, I
realized he was already awake. I hesitated to say anything to him (after all, he was such an important person) but finally I thought to myself that since we were sleeping in
the same room together, surely there was no reason why we shouldn't talk. So I
turned to him and announced that I had never thought I would actually be sleeping in the same
room with the vice-president of the United States. I thought to
myself that only a few people would ever have this kind of honor,
and I felt humbled.

At first I didn't know if Gore
was going to say anything back to me; but he did and we began
having a friendly conversation. This was my room – Gore was visiting me. He sat up on the side of the bed, and
unlike what I would have thought, he seemed relaxed and not rushed to leave or end our conversation.

I didn't think Gore knew
much about me, and I was unsure he wanted to know anything.
Since we were in the same room together, however, I saw no harm in
telling him something about myself. I began rather timidly by
saying that I had an unusual occupation: I was a
dream
writer. I tried to explain what I meant by that,
since I was sure Gore had never heard of such a thing. I
told him it was my intention to write books of dreams and that each book would cover a different theme or a different
person. I told him that "my father, my mother, and my sister," or maybe even a certain object or symbol
might become the subject of one of my books. I tried to explain that I had had so many dreams about my family members that I
already had written enough dreams for books about them. But I
also wanted to clarify that I didn't intend to write books
only about members of my family, but I wanted to write books
about other subjects.

For instance, I explained, I
had had many dreams about different presidents, and I had been
thinking of writing a book containing all the dreams I had had of
the presidents. In fact (I thought to myself) in some ways I
envisioned myself as a historical "chronicler." I
mentioned that I had had numerous dreams about Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and then I added I had
even had dreams about him, Al Gore.

As I told Gore I had
dreamed about him, I walked over to my computer, in the
corner of the room. The computer had a flat screen hanging on the wall, like new flat-screen televisions
which I had heard
would soon be coming on the market. I told Gore that I had over 4,000 pages of dreams stored on
my computer, and that I could do word searches of any word, and
pull up the dreams in which the word had appeared. I told him
I could even do a word search of his name and pull up all
the dreams in which he had appeared. But then I stopped and
corrected myself; I told him I wasn't quite sure I had
4,000 pages of dreams – it might be closer to 3,500.

By now, Gore was standing
beside me and showing obvious interest. Since I had stored copies
of my dreams on the smaller three and a half inch disks, with one year's dreams on each disk, I began shuffling through the
disks, trying to remember when I might have had the first dream
of Gore. First I tried to think of when he had been elected vice
president. At first I thought it might have been in 1988, but
then I realized he had been elected in 1992, and I stuck the 1992 disk
in the computer. I then sat down and typed in the word
"Gore" for a word search.

As the computer started
working, however, I realized there was also a verb "gore,"
as well as an author named "Gore Vidal" who might have
appeared in my dreams. The word search would also turn up those "gores."
But that wasn't my main problem. I seemed to be having other difficulty with the computer, because all I could see on
the screen were lines of letters smashed together in no order.
This was embarrassing because the vice-president was standing
right beside me, waiting. Fortunately he didn't seem impatient,
and he even seemed intrigued by what I was doing.

As I continued to try to
straighten out the problem, Gore bent over and picked up
something lying on the floor. When he had the object in his hand,
I saw is was a long-playing album of a Broadway show called
"No, No, Nannette." Displayed on the orange background
of the album cover were pictures of dancing girls throwing up
their legs under long white billowy dresses. Surprised by
Gore's obvious interest in the album, I told him I had
just bought it the day before and I hadn't had a chance to put it
up yet.

When I returned to looking at
my computer, the screen was no longer on the wall.
Instead, I had to look through a large window next to me: the
screen was now sitting outside, about five meters from the
window. It looked as if the area directly outside the window
might be a concrete-covered school playground. Children were
running about the playground, and they all appeared to be young
black boys (around 10-12 years old).

As Gore also looked out the
window, 15 or 20 of the boys began shyly moving closer
to us, apparently intrigued to see the vice-president inside.
Suddenly Gore barked out something at the boys and they all
quickly dispersed. I was impressed by the way Gore had scattered
the boys. He seemed strong, almost militaristic in his attitude.
But I thought his manner was probably necessary since he was probably
often in danger, subject to assassination. I turned to him and
asked, "Are you ever afraid?"

His answer was immediate –
yes, he was often afraid. Especially when he had to walk through
crowds of people, when someone could just walk up with a gun and shoot him. I was impressed by his honesty.
He seemed like a particularly strong and brave man, yet he wasn't embarrassed to admit he was afraid.

While we had
been speaking, two of the fellows from outside had actually
climbed in through the window and were looking around my room.
Like the others outside, these two were black; but they were
older, probably in their late teens. I was bothered when I saw
that they had walked over to some shelves and were picking up
some record albums and video tapes, looking them over as if they
might be interested in taking them. Still impressed by the way
Gore had run off the boys outside, I walked over to the two in my
room and forcefully told them they would have to leave. They
reluctantly complied and climbed back out the window.

I settled back into my seat and
focused on the screen which was still sitting outside. I could
just barely make out the words. It looked as if the problem now
was that I had typed in the wrong word, and the computer was
searching for the word "work." I saw some of the
letters of "work" were the same as "gore" and
I thought I must have hit the wrong keys when I had done the word
search. I typed in the word "gore" again, and finally I
saw that the computer had found a dream with the word in it. It
looked as if I were finally going to have a dream to read the
vice-president in which he had appeared.